This invention relates to furniture shelving and fasteners for supporting and securing such shelving on adjacent supports. More particularly, this invention concerns a resilient, one-piece fastener clip and joint including same which releasably secures the shelf to its support without requiring the tightening or loosening of any threaded or other fasteners.
It has long been conventional in the furniture industry to secure shelving, and particularly hollow or formed metal metal shelving to side supports using threaded screws extending through the shelf end flange into a vertical end panel or support. The installation of such shelves requires the proper tightening of the screws into the end support. However, rapid or somewhat careless installation of the shelving has often resulted in improperly tightened screws which do not adequately secure the shelves to the supports. In addition, even if the screw fasteners were properly tightened initially, the necessity of removing the shelves from time to time has required repeated tightening or loosening of the screws. This often caused stripping of the screws or the bores in which the screws were seated in the end supports, especially when the end supports were formed of soft material such as wood. Further, mere use of the shelving over long periods of time can also cause loosening of the screw fasteners holding the shelves in place.
All of these securing problems created potentially injurious situations since a fully loaded shelf could unexpectedly fall or be knocked loose without warning. In view of such problems standards were proposed in the office furniture industry by the Business Interiors Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) to reduce the liability potential for injury from improperly secured shelving. Such standards, entitled "Panel Mounted Component Dislodgement Test", now specify an appropriate test procedure to assure that accidental dislodging of a shelf will not occur. Such procedure includes resistance to specified amounts of upward force without structural breakage or loss of serviceability.
Attempts were made to resolve the above problems in various ways. For wood end supports, metal inserts were placed in the end panels to provide proper attachment for the threaded fasteners. This method was expensive due to the labor and materials for installing the inserts and still did not resolve the problem of improper initial tightening or installation of the shelving. The inserts themselves could also loosen and/or come out unexpectedly.
The present invention was devised to meet the above furniture industry standards and in recognition of and as a solution for the above and other related problems.